


and the chains fall away

by arihime



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Love Confessions, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 02:11:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20592965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arihime/pseuds/arihime
Summary: A late night and a sleepy confession lead Byleth and Dimitri to confront their feelings for each other.Prequel-ish toLong Time Coming





	and the chains fall away

**Author's Note:**

> And here's the Dimileth angst.
> 
> Big thanks to Abby and Haley for beta'ing.

Sleep eludes Byleth. Or perhaps to be more accurate, Byleth eludes sleep. She slept five years of her life away; she is not keen on sleeping anymore. So instead, she wanders around the monastery grounds, her cloak thrown over her night clothes, a dagger at her hip. “Patrolling,” she’ll say if anyone asks, though no one does. 

At night, the monastery is quiet. Peaceful, even. She can almost pretend that no time has passed, and that tomorrow, all her students will pile into her classroom, five years younger and eager to learn. The fantasy lasts until she finds a mass of rubble left over from the Battle of Garreg Mach, deemed too inconsequential to bother clearing out. Byleth sighs and turns away from it, heading up the stairs onto the second floor. Here, shadows engulf the corridor, broken only by moonlight from the windows at the opposite end of the hall.

Byleth is careful to keep her steps quiet as she walks. It’s not uncommon for people to sleep in their offices, and the last thing she wants to do is wake anyone. At the end of the hall, she turns left, away from the library and any of the researchers who might have fallen asleep on their books.

She rounds the corner and pauses. The door to the cardinal’s room is slightly ajar, faint orange light peeking through the crack. 

Someone else afflicted with insomnia, it seems. Byleth goes through a mental catalog of her former students and colleagues, wondering who would be in there this late at night. The list is narrow. Other than Byleth herself, Seteth and Gilbert are the only ones who come to mind, and both of them are reasonable adults who are most likely asleep at this hour.

She peeks inside.

Dimitri sits near the head of the table, hunched over a stack of papers. More are scattered around him, haphazard and half-falling. The candles next to him are burned almost to the wick, throwing harsh shadows over his face. Still, he looks better than he had months ago. The bags under his eye are gone, the lines on his face smooth even as he squints at the paper before him. As Byleth watches, he fumbles for a quill, the feather small in his gauntleted hand. He lifts it to sign, but a yawn catches him with a quill half raised. Ink drips onto the page.

Byleth slides into the room, finally letting her footsteps make noise.

Dimitri looks up, startled, but smiles when he sees her.

“Late night, Professor?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Byleth says, motioning to the papers. 

Dimitri looks down at the stack and sighs. “With the march to Fhirdiad drawing near, I realized how much of my work as crown prince I had been neglecting. Gilbert has been handling such things in my stead, but. . .”

_But Gilbert has other duties to attend to. But Gilbert is not the future King of Faerghus. But Gilbert shouldn’t have to take care of my duties. _ Byleth can see all the explanations piling up in Dimitri’s mind. Since coming to his senses, guilt seems to have replaced the bloodlust that drove him. When before he’d spurned sleep due to the madness plaguing him, now he stays awake trying to set right all the things he thought he’d broken. Byleth hurt to see his lack of self-care in both cases, but this, at least, she knows how to help.

She walks towards him and eyes the papers. Supply lists, troop and merchant reports. Nothing critical.

“Surely some of this can wait until morning?”

“It could, but then more papers will join the stack. Though it is exhausting, filling in the blanks of five years and several months must be done. I need to tackle them all. That . . Byleth?”

Byleth circles the table as he speaks, collecting papers and fixing them into neat stacks out of his reach. She makes one, two, three stacks before she looks up at the sound of her name.

“Your diligence is admirable, Dimitri, truly,” she says, recapping a pot of ink next to him and teasing the quill from his grasp. “But wouldn’t it be better to get some sleep and tackle all this in the morning with a fresh mind?”

“I. . .”

“You needn’t run yourself ragged to prove yourself, Dimitri. You’ll have years to do that as king once we take back Fhirdiad. Right now, though, all your people ask of you—” _all that I ask of you_ “—is that you’re healthy and well rested.”

_And safe, and happy,_ Byleth adds, the list infinite in her mind.

Dimitri blinks at her, surprise clear on his face.

Byleth smiles back and continues tidying the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Dimitri push the paper he was about to sign away and lean back.

He chuckles, low and warm.

“Right as always, beloved.”

Byleth gasps, the papers falling from her fingers. She stoops to pick them up, ducking her face to hide her surprise.

He didn’t— surely, she misheard.

(She didn’t. She heard. He really thinks—)

The sound of a chair sliding back jerks her out of her thoughts.

“Byleth? Is something wrong?” Dimitri asks, peering at her.

“Nothing! That is, I. . .”

She settles the fallen papers in a harried stack on the table. There’s a distant beating sound in her ears. Not the heartbeat that she doesn’t have, but something else, something Byleth can’t quite name.

She glances up at Dimitri through her bangs. His single eye is wide with concern, no sign that he’s realized what he said. But Byleth knows that she didn’t mishear. That word coming from his lips is the stuff of a fantasy she’d long locked away in her heart. The smart thing to do, she knows, would be to leave it until things are more settled, until the war is over.

And yet. . .

Byleth takes a breath and looks Dimitri head on. “. . .Do you really mean what you just said?”

Dimitri blinks. “What do you—”

She sees the moment he realizes. He cuts off, a blush coloring his checks. Emotions flash in his eye, too quick for Byleth to name. 

Then his gaze goes blank.

Dimitri stands and turns away from her. “You’re right; I am tired. I should go to sleep.”

His voice is flat, decisive. Byleth recoils at the tacit dismissal.

Something tightens in her chest as he starts to walk away. A voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like Sothis screams a warning. There will be no going back if she presses this; whatever has built between them since Dimitri’s recovery is a fragile thing, delicate as glass. A single touch could shatter it.

Byleth crosses the distance between them in three hurried steps and catches Dimitri’s wrist. With his gauntlets on, her hand doesn’t completely encircle his wrist.

“You called me ‘beloved’,” Byleth says. He goes rigid at the word, but Byleth continues. “Do you really mean that? Do you really—” _Love me._ She can’t bring herself to say it. Not when he won’t look at her, his whole body tense as if awaiting a blow. 

Her question hangs in the air, suspended on hope alone. 

Dimitri says nothing. 

Byleth’s heart starts to fall.

“Dimitri, _please—_”

Silence is her only answer. Is enough of an answer that she drops his wrist. The moment around her shatters into a million pieces. Or maybe that’s her heart. After everything, after seeing the man before her plead to the dead and rage at the living, rage at _her,_ it is his silence that has finally broken Byleth. She clamps a hand over her mouth to stifle a sudden sob and dashes past him, the sound of her footsteps loud in the silent room.

He stops her with a single word.

“Yes.”

Byleth freezes, her hand dropping as she turns back to him.

The tension in his body is gone, replaced with something that feels like resignation and a strange sort of resolve.

“Yes, I meant it when I called you ‘beloved’.”

Warmth alights in Byleth’s heart. The pieces start to mend—

“Then. . . you love me?”

“Yes.” The confession sounds as if torn from his very being.

Byleth frowns. She walks back towards him, reaching. “Dimitri—”

“I’m not worthy of it!” he shouts, voice echoing through the room.

Byleth’s steps stutter to a halt. 

Dimitri shakes his head, expression pained. Guilt hunches his shoulders, ducks his head and shadows his eye with his hair. 

When he speaks again, his voice is raw and anguished.

“After everything I’ve done. . . all the blood I’ve split and the lives I’ve destroyed. After how I’ve treated _you,_ what right do I have to love you? To call you my beloved?”

Byleth’s heart breaks for him. Of all the things for him to feel guilty about, she never imagined that she would be one of them. 

She never wanted to be. 

Dimitri doesn’t move as she closes the distance between them. Byleth slides her palm across his cheek, tilting his face until she can see his eye. He won’t meet her gaze. She brushes his bangs out of his face, tucking loose strands behind his ear, and still he won’t look at her, though he leans into her touch as if by instinct.

“Dimitri, it’s not a matter of being worthy,” Byleth starts softly. “You have every right to love and be loved, and I—”

Byleth remembers when she first saw him at the Goddess Tower, ragged and feral, blood spattered across his face. She remembers being breathless at the sight of him, a strange feeling bubbling up in her chest and then crumbling into pieces. She’d wrapped what remained in chains and locked it away for when he recovered, for when the boy who taught her how to smile returned, and knowing full well that she might never get it back. But the chains have been loosening since that day in the rain when he took her hand. When he looks at her with gentle eyes and _smiles,_ the chains fall away.

“I love you, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd.”

She feels a jolt go through him as the full meaning of her words hits him. His head jerks upwards, disbelief in his gaze.

Byleth smiles and caresses his cheek.

“I love you,” she says again, as easy as breathing. Now that the chains are gone, the words rebound in her heart, eager to be released. Eager to be reciprocated. “Won’t you love me in return?” 

Dimitri’s eye widens more, emotions flashing across his face. As close as she is, Byleth can read them now. Disbelief, happiness, uncertainty— 

He takes a breath. 

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Dimi—”

Lips on her own swallow her words. Gentle, oh so very gentle, that pull away after a second of contact. Byleth chases him, grabbing the fringes of his cloak to pull him back down to her. Their lips meet again, and the tension melts from Dimitri’s body. There is nothing tentative in him this time. He kisses her like a man starving, like she is the only thing that will keep him alive. Byleth kisses him back just as fiercely. One hand moves up his shoulder, fingers fisting in his hair. Dimitri moans, and his hands settle on her hips almost instinctively.

Time falls away from Byleth as they kiss. It could be minutes or hours before they part, both breathing hard. Dimitri pulls back a fraction, as if he is loath to be parted from her, and rests his forehead against hers.

“I _don’t_ deserve you,” he says again, the words soft. “But if you’ll have me, I swear that I’ll work for the rest of my life to be worthy of you. I love you, Byleth Eisner.”


End file.
